| chocoloco said:
I used this chart as one of my main arguements of why marijuana should be legalized a couple years ago in a public speaking class in which I debated on why marijuana should be legalized. Dependence: is defined here as how difficult it is for the user to quit, how often they relapse, the percentage of people who become dependent, and the degree to which people will use in the face of evidence of it’s negative effects. Withdrawl: is the presence and severity of withdrawal symptoms. Tolerance: Is how much of a substance a body continually needs to achieve the same effect that was originally produced. Reinforcement: Pertains mostly to the likelihood that the user will use the drug again especially in preference to other substances. Intoxication: in this context intoxication is associated with the social and personal damages the substance causes. I am having trouble finding my original source for this graph, but it originally came from a group called safer sensible Colorado who put a bill up to legalize marijuana in the state in 2006. This reaserch was government funded of course.
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There are other factors that you're not considering like how long a drug says in the blood system, whether there are cumulative effects of regular use, and so on; which are factors that have been suggested to be significant problems with Marijuana. On top of this, I would question the methodology being that it seems like the scoring seems somewhat arbitrary; and it seems like the worst case was assumed for most of the criteria for most drugs (potentially, except for Cannabis). What I mean by this is you have to be a significant alcoholic to have serious withdrawal symptoms, you have to drink pretty heavily to have significant intoxication, physical dependence takes a very long time to develop and most alcoholics spend years with emotional dependence prior to developing a physical dependence (and this can be true of all intoxicating substances), and so on. Basically, if you're charting the 1% most serious of alcoholics against a typical/light Cannabis user it is not a fair comparison.
I'm not disagreeing with the concept of your argument, just saying that it is not comprehensive enough and it depends heavily on an unknown methodology (which could be seriously flawed).
